Optimal Grassland Locations for Sustainable Photovoltaic Water Pumping Systems in China

Grassland is of strategic importance for food security of China because of the high number of livestock raised in those areas. Grassland degradation due to climate change and overgrazing is thus regarded as severe environmental and economic threat for a sustainable future development of China. Photovoltaic water pumping (PVWP) systems for irrigation can play an important role for the conservation of grassland areas, halting degradation, improving its productivity and farmers’ income and living conditions. The aim of this paper is to identify the technically suitable grassland areas for the implementation of PVWP systems by assessing spatial data on land cover and slope, precipitation, potential evapotranspiration and water stress index. Furthermore, the optimal locations for installing PVWP systems have been assessed using a spatially explicit renewable energy systems optimization model based on the minimization of the cost of the whole supply chain. The results indicate that the PVWP-supported grassland areas show high potential in terms of improving forage productivity to contribute to supplying the local demand. Nevertheless, the optimal areas are highly sensitive to several environmental and economic parameters such as ground water depth, forage water requirements, forage price and CO2 emission costs. These parameters need to be carefully considered in the planning process to meet the forage yield potentials.